Optical communication systems are widely used for data communication. An optical communication system may comprise an optical transmitter, a channel (e.g., optical fibers), and an optical receiver. The optical transmitter may encode data onto an optical signal, the channel may carry the optical signal from the transmitter to the receiver, and the receiver may recover the data from the received optical signal. Optical access networks are currently employed for delivering a wide variety of high-throughput data and services, such as fiber to the home (FTTH), fiber to the building (FTTB), enterprise connectivity, business connectivity, and mobile back-haul and front-haul for fourth generation (4G) and/or next generation wireless communication. The growing demand for increased optical network capacities poses challenges to current and future network designs. In order to achieve high capacity communications in the limited spectral bandwidth, recent research has focused on increasing spectral efficiency by employing higher order modulation schemes, such as polarization-multiplexed binary phase-shift keying (PM-BPSK), polarization-multiplexed quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK), polarization-multiplexed 8 quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-8QAM), or polarization-multiplexed 16 QAM (PM-16QAM), to provide data rates greater than 20 gigabits per second (Gbps). In addition, the optical network industry is driving towards flexible and adaptive networks to provide cost-effective solutions, in which the networks and/or network equipment may be reconfigurable or software programmable, similar to the approach of software defined radios (SDRs) in wireless communication, and may adapt to changes in application demands and traffic conditions.